


the age of the heart

by achillese



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Alternate Universe, Cute, De-Aged Adam, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Mild Language, Spells & Enchantments, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-06
Updated: 2014-08-06
Packaged: 2018-02-12 02:47:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2092758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achillese/pseuds/achillese
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Adam gets hit by a de-aging spell and everyone expects him to be a stoic-faced, very serious toddler. Instead, what the Winchesters get is a ball of energy, enthusiasm, and excitement, and a mouth that won't shut the hell up. </p><p>Also, the angels get involved and try their hand at parenting. It doesn't end as badly as you'd think it would.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the age of the heart

Nobody told Dean that the witch he and Sam had been chasing down in Newark was particularly skilled at aging and de-aging spells. Then again, they hadn’t really thought to look that deeply into the witch’s history, so they both thought that going after her with guns a-blazing would be a good way to solve this latest hunt. 

Adam was with them this time around, which was unusual in and of itself. Usually he stayed behind at Bobby’s to help with the research and complete his online college courses without the distraction of the supernatural, but he’d tagged along this time because he needed to, quote, “shoot something to de-stress from this dumbass exam coming up.”

In retrospect, he should’ve stayed back at Bobby’s.

“A de-aging spell,” Bobby repeated over the phone line. He was on speaker as Sam and Dean stood side by side in front of the hotel bed where Adam was lying, asleep. Normally the sight would be a welcome one – Adam asleep was always easier to deal with than him awake – except for the glaring detail that this Adam was _four years old_. 

“He hasn’t woken up yet since the witch got him with it,” Dean explained in a low voice. “He doesn’t look...I mean, he’s not _hurt_ , but...”

“How do we reverse this, Bobby?” Sam butt in, eyebrows furrowed with worry.

“I’ll look into it. You boys get back here as soon as you can and we’ll sort this out.”

Bobby hung up and Sam and Dean continued to stare at their half brother – their much littler half brother. His hair was a darker shade of blond than usual and he had his thumb jammed into his mouth as he slept, legs curled up towards his chest. His clothes didn’t fit him anymore so Sam had managed to wrangle the sleeping toddler into one of his own plain shirts, already far too big because Sam was built like a goddamn truck.

They were so fucked.

\---

Adam blinked awake about two hours later when Dean was flipping through TV channels on the other hotel bed and Sam was sitting at the small kitchenette scrolling through his laptop. They both heard a small yawning noise and looked over to see Adam rubbing his eyes with his tiny fists. With the way he was laying on his side, he was facing Dean’s direction, and for a split second Dean wondered if maybe de-aging their brother meant that he lost all of his own memories of the Winchesters.

That fear subsided once Adam reached out to him, with his short arms concealed in the sleeves of Sam’s shirt, and yelled, “Dean!” with a smile on his face. 

“Hey kiddo,” Dean said warily, standing up from the bed and sitting down next to Adam. “Have a nice nap?”

“’M hungry,” Adam complained, tugging on the bottom of Dean’s shirt. 

Dean looked up at Sam, daring not to feel too relieved about how goddamn normally Adam was taking his current situation, and repeated, “Kid’s hungry.”

Sam nodded quickly and ran a hand through his hair. “Okay. Okay, okay. We can deal with hungry. I’ll go run to the mini-mart and grab some food, yeah?” He was out of his seat and grabbing the Impala’s keys from the counter before Dean could form a coherent response.

\---

They both had no idea what to expect from Adam as a four year-old child. For some reason Dean had pictured a stony-faced, serious toddler that would sit in the backseat of the Impala quietly, maybe passing the time between New Jersey and South Dakota by napping and staring out the window while contemplating life’s many mysteries, as adult-Adam was wont to do.

Instead, what the Winchesters got was a ball of energy and a mouth that wouldn’t shut the hell up. Adam talked a mile a minute, pointed out stuff that they drove past (the lady walking her dog, the diner off the side of the road, the yellow car that drove by them, the horses running around the field to their left...), and sometimes managed to slip out from his seatbelt so he could try to crawl over the divider and into the passenger seat to sit in Sam’s lap. 

They had to get off at the nearest exit to find a place where they could buy a car seat and strap him in.

The rest of the drive was still as close to nightmarish as Dean remembered any of their previous drives to be. Just because Adam was safe in a car seat didn’t mean his mouth stopped working.

“Dean? _Deeeeaaaaan_? I have to pee.”

“Didn’t you just go to the bathroom like an hour ago?”

“I have to _pee_!”

Sam had to shove his fist to his mouth to keep from laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation, but Dean heard him anyway and smacked him in the back of the head. 

After the quick bathroom stop, Sam had Bobby on the phone while Dean drove ten miles over the speed limit trying to make it back to the salvage yard in record time, before Adam could complain for another potty break. 

“Yeah, he’s still little...uh-huh...uh, no, he knows who Dean and I are...yeah, I know, it’s weird...can you see if maybe Cas can—”

Before Sam could finish his sentence, Dean smacked his shoulder lightly to get his attention. “No angels.”

“Dean—”

“I’m serious, Sam, I don’t want any other angels messing with Adam anymore. Not without his say-so. And something tells me he’s not exactly in the right frame of mind to make a decision this huge right now.”

Sam listened to his literal baby brother babbling in the backseat about how one of the clouds outside looked like a dragon and nodded at Dean’s words.

\---

They reach South Dakota in no time at all with Dean’s crazy driving, and by the time Bobby gets the door open the two boys are standing there with Dean cradling a sleeping Adam in his arms, thumb in his tiny mouth like always.

Bobby stood there in dumb silence for a second or two before saying, “Y’know, I kinda hoped you’d be kidding about the de-aging thing.”

“I’m guessing that means you’ve had no luck,” Dean mumbled as he made his way into the house, moving slowly so he didn’t jolt Adam awake. 

“Not in the book department, no, but there’s still the Internet.”

Dean walks into the living room and sets Adam down carefully on the couch. They’d been dressing him in their own shirts the past few days, swaddling him up in the fabric like a newborn and rolling back the sleeves so his hands could poke through. Sam had suggested that they buy a couple pairs of clothes for him but Dean refused; he didn’t want to start treating this like a permanent situation. They’d get their snarky, moody, eye-rolling Adam back even if it killed them to try. 

Right now, though, they had to deal with a toddler who was yawning himself awake on the couch while Bobby busied himself at his desk. Adam opened his eyes and was quiet for one blessed minute, absorbing his new surroundings, until he saw Bobby for the first time. 

“Uncle Bobby!” he blurted happily, pushing himself off the couch and landing on the floor in a small heap of T-shirt with a _thump_. For a split second Dean panicked, worried that Adam hit his head or hurt himself somehow, but before he could work up a good heightened heartbeat, Adam was tumbling over his own feet trying to run to Bobby’s side. 

The older man watched in silent amusement as the toddler wrapped his arms around one of his legs in some semblance of a hug, squeezing as tightly as his tiny arms would allow. “Missed you,” the little tyke said, voice muffled by Bobby’s jeans. 

When Bobby looked back up at Dean, the elder Winchester could swear there were tears pricking at the old man’s eyes. “You sure we can’t keep him like this?”

\---

By the following day when Adam still wasn’t back to normal, Sam decided to bring him into town to buy clothes that actually fit a four-year-old. Dean grudgingly tagged along, still under the impression that Adam would only go back to his regular age soon anyway, so what was the point of buying clothes that would never be used again?

But eventually Bobby and Sam convinced him to just _go_ , so there he was, pushing a shopping cart with Adam sitting in the child seat while Sam walked ahead and scoped out some clothing. He already had a sizable pile in his arms that he sometimes dumped into the shopping cart. Dean noted that there was a lot of plaid and wondered if it was a conscious decision or if Sam was trying to be a cheeky little shit about foisting their wardrobe choices on a toddler. Adam didn’t seem to mind the patterns as long as Sam picked out whatever superhero T-shirts he could find; Dean had to return a Spider-Man shirt to one of the racks when he found that Sam had inadvertently dumped two of them into the cart at Adam’s say-so. He crossed his fingers that Sam didn’t see when he leaned over and grabbed a Batman shirt hanging nearby and tossed it into the cart. No way was his baby brother going through his second phase of childhood without a Batman shirt to his name.

A woman shopping on her own paused on her way down the aisle to smile at Adam, who was tugging on Dean’s sleeve asking if they could get ice cream after this. “Is he yours?” she asked with a wide smile, wiggling her fingers at Adam in the semblance of a wave.

Dean looked down at the toddler sitting in front of him, at the blue eyes and dark blond hair and cheeks still round with baby fat. “Yeah. He’s mine.”

\---

Three days later and they finally decided to call in the winged squad.

“Where is he?” Castiel asked, standing in Bobby’s foyer looking uncharacteristically at ease. Michael was behind him leaning against the wall, arms folded while he and Sam talked in hushed tones about whatever the hell an archangel and a hunter could be geeking out about. 

Before Dean could answer, the sound of tiny footsteps came from the kitchen; Adam was running towards them as fast as his little legs could carry him. He was all decked out in his new clothes – a small pair of jeans, a Superman tee, and a red-and-white plaid shirt – and launched himself at Castiel as soon as he saw the angel. 

“Cas!” Adam shrieked in that high-pitched voice only small children could make. 

He jumped up and grabbed onto Castiel’s trench coat, clinging for dear life as he hung an inch or so off the ground. Castiel looked down at him, totally caught off guard. “I’d imagined Adam as a child would be more...Adam-like,” he finally commented after a few seconds of stunned silence. 

“So did we, believe me,” Dean lamented. “We’re still hoping maybe he goes through a quiet phase soon.”

“He seems to remember everyone, though, which is good,” Castiel continued as Adam continued to hang off of his trench coat. “I wonder how deep those memories go.”

Eventually Michael bent down and plucked Adam from under his armpits to pick him up. “He looks like he’s a handful,” he said with a small smile, holding Adam up in a style that Dean thought was very Simba-esque. “I can’t exactly picture you two as the parental types.”

“I take offense to that. I make a _great_ parent,” Dean said, crossing his arms over his chest defensively. 

“Coming from the guy who refused to read _Goodnight Moon_ to him last night,” Sam interjected. Dean gave him a look of pure betrayal.

Michael chuckled as Adam squirmed around in his arms and eventually the toddler found himself with his arms wound around the archangel’s neck, hanging from him like a monkey. “It really _is_ hard to believe that this little thing grew up into a moody, eye-rolling young adult.”

“It’s the great Winchester curse, I’m afraid,” Castiel deadpanned. 

“Hey!” Dean protested. “I’m a ray of goddamn sunshine on a good day.”

“I’m guessing those are the days that don’t end in a ‘Y’,” Michael said with a smirk. 

“The hell is this, ‘pick on Dean day’?”

“That’s every day for me,” Sam said. 

Dean threw up his hands in surrender and retreated into the kitchen. “I don’t need this. I’m getting a beer.”

Castiel chuckled to himself and followed. Sam remained in the foyer with Michael, who was trying to put Adam back on the ground when the toddler tugged on his shirtsleeve insistently. 

“Have you been on any hunts since he’s turned?” Michael asked.

Sam shook his head. “We’ve kinda had our hands full, between looking for a cure for this thing and just generally making sure he doesn’t get himself into any trouble.”

“Sam, you know Castiel and myself would be more than willing to fix—”

“I know, I know. But Dean doesn’t want any angel involvement in this.” Sam shrugged apologetically. “It’s nothing...well, I mean, it is kinda personal, but you know what I mean.”

“I do. It’s not a problem.” Michael finally managed to get Adam to let go of him and he watched the toddler follow the path into the kitchen. “You know, if you and Dean are up for it, I’d be more than willing to look after him for a few days while you two catch up on some cases and while Bobby does his research.”

Sam gave him a look. _You’ve gotta be shitting me_. “You seriously don’t expect me to believe that you’re volunteering to be on babysit duty for a few days.”

Michael shrugged. “I think I can handle it.”

\---

**(The next day)**

“Again! Again!” Adam demanded, clapping his hands. 

Michael smiled down at the toddler from where he sat on the bed and closed his eyes, vanishing on the spot. Adam clapped and giggled with glee before pushing himself off the ground and waddling around the room, trying to find the archangel. 

They’d been playing Extreme Hide-And-Seek for about half an hour now, with Michael vanishing and hiding in different spots while Adam tried to look for him. Castiel had inadvertently created the game when he vanished right in front of Adam earlier and didn’t reappear for another hour, prompting the toddler to ask “Again!” At first Castiel hadn’t understood the command, but after a moment of thought he’d grinned and thus a new game was born.

Adam peeked behind the curtains of the bedroom but Michael wasn’t there. He made a small noise of disappointment before running off to the adjoining bathroom to see if Michael was hiding behind the shower curtain like last time. They were still in Bobby’s house and Adam knew how to navigate the whole second floor, but Michael was just that much better at hiding as a result. 

Adam pushed the shower curtain away triumphantly but Michael wasn’t there. 

“Mich’l,” Adam whined, stumbling over the archangel’s name. “Can’t find you!”

There was a rustling noise behind him, coming from the bedroom, and Adam whirled on his heels and ran towards the closet, pushing the double doors open with his little arms. The clothes hanging off the hangers were swaying ever so slightly and Adam grinned as he shoved his way through them, colliding with Michael’s legs in the dark. 

“Found you!” Adam yelled, wrapping both arms around his legs and squeezing. “You made noise.”

Michael pretended to look surprised. “Did I? Darn. You win again.”

“Again!”

“Again? Are you sure?”

“Again!”

\---

**(Two days later)**

“Don’t want,” Adam whined, turning his face away and burrowing under the bed sheets.

Castiel sighed and continued to kneel next to the bed, the spoonful of cough syrup still in his hand. “Adam, you have to drink this if you want to feel better.”

“Don’t want!” was Adam’s muffled reply. 

“You’ve been sick for two days now – this’ll help you get better.”

“Tastes gross!”

Castiel sniffed the syrup and wrinkled his nose; it sure _smelled_ gross. Why couldn’t humans, with all their advanced technology, make better-tasting liquid medicine? Was it _that_ difficult? 

Dean had explicitly asked Castiel and Michael not to use their “angel juice” to heal Adam’s cough-and-cold combination; he was still adamantly on the anti-supernatural side of the fence when it came to dealing with his baby brother’s health and wellbeing. 

Still, that didn’t mean Castiel couldn’t use his talents on the side. With a small wave of his hand, he willed the cough syrup to taste like sweet candy instead of whatever bastardized version of cherry the medicine company thought they were selling. 

“Adam, I promise you, it tastes better than before.”

“No!”

Castiel rolled his eyes and tugged on the sheets a little. He felt Adam wiggle around and pull them tighter around his body, closing himself off from the angel and the outside world. 

Adam sneezed under the sheets. 

“Adam, if you don’t take this medicine, I’ll have to tell Michael not to read to you tonight before you go to bed,” Castiel threatened, as an angel of heaven could only threaten a small boy. 

Adam stilled under the sheets, thinking hard. “Promise it won’t taste yucky?”

“I promise.”

There was a pause before the sheets moved and Adam poked his head out from underneath, just exposing everything from his nose and above. His nose, speaking of, was bright red with all the times he’d been blowing into tissues and sniffling back whatever snot was running. Michael had to make a trip to the store earlier to buy lotion tissues after the regular tissues started irritating the toddler’s nose. 

Castiel wiggled the spoon in what he hoped was an inviting gesture. “Just one of these and you’re done for the night.”

Adam stared at the angel, his blue eyes seemingly brighter and more intense even though he was sick, before he finally pulled himself out from under the sheets and sat up, back resting against the pile of pillows at the head of the bed. “Just one,” Adam said, his expression serious.

Castiel nodded and held the spoon up to Adam’s lips.

\---

They always had more than an inkling that Adam’s memory was still, somehow, fully intact, but a week later ( _when would this spell wear off?_ ) was when they had actual proof of it.

Adam was in the kitchen trying to reach for the fridge door when Sam pulled it open for him.

“What’cha trying to reach, buddy?” he asked, bending down and picking Adam up by the armpits and sitting him on the counter. “I’ll get it for you.”

“Cupcake,” he demanded, pointing. 

Sam had no idea there’d even _been_ a cupcake in the fridge, but sure enough it was there, sitting on a paper plate and covered messily in pink frosting with rainbow sprinkles and a single white candle sticking crookedly out of the top. Clearly it was homemade.

“When did you make this?” Sam asked as he put the plate on the counter next to Adam. 

“Yesterday with Mich’l. We eated the rest of them,” Adam explained with a grin. 

“Oh really? And you didn’t leave any for me?” Sam teased, poking him in the stomach and making him giggle. 

“This one’s for Mommy!” Adam said, and Sam froze.

“What d’you mean?” he asked, studying Adam’s face closely for any signs of sadness or grief, but the four year-old just seemed very matter-of-fact about what he’d just said.

“Mommy’s birthday,” Adam said, fixing the candle so it stood straight. “It’s today.”

Sam glanced at the cupcake, which looked all the more depressing now that he knew what it stood for. He swallowed hard. “Adam, your mom—”

“I know she’s not here,” Adam interrupted as he looked Sam in the eye unflinchingly. “But she should still have a birthday.” He paused and kicked his little legs back and forth. “They celebrate birthdays in heaven, right?”

Sam found it very hard to swallow. “’Course they do, kiddo. Every year.”

He leaned in and gave Adam a hug and it was all he could do not to accidentally crush his little brother with the strength of it.

\---

The cure for Adam’s de-aging came a week after Kate Milligan’s apparent birthday in the form of Bobby smacking his desktop and shouting, “I got it!” The ingredients for the spell were varied, many, and rare, and it took an extra two days for Michael and Castiel to pop around the world to gather them all, but in the end they ended up with a plastic jar full of a reddish-pink liquid that looked like Pepto Bismol but probably didn’t taste nearly as appetizing.

“He’s been great to have around as a kid lately. Are you sure we have to turn him back?” Bobby asked, half-kidding as they all stood in a semi-circle around Adam, who was sitting on Bobby’s couch with the jar clutched in both of his small hands. He was already dressed in his regular adult-sized clothing, a preparation for when he would inevitably grow back into his normal size. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up tenfold and the legs of his pants dangled down far below his feet. 

Dean sighed. “We gotta get him back to normal, guys. It wouldn’t be fair if we kept him like this.”

“I know, I know. Maybe in another universe,” Bobby mused, mostly to himself. 

Castiel waved his hand and changed the flavor of the liquid concoction, knowing all too well that Adam wouldn’t drink it if it tasted like crap. “Okay, Adam. Drink up.”

Adam looked down at the liquid apprehensively, sizing it up, and struggled to lift it to his mouth; it was apparently heavy. Michael knelt down and helped tip the plastic jar up and hold it to Adam’s lips while the toddler drank, his face scrunched him in the most intense form of concentration ever. When Adam finished drinking the concoction in its entirety, the archangel stood up and backed away a few feet just in case.

It was like watching a plant grow in fast-forward. Adam grew taller, then thinner, then muscles sprouted back where they used to be. His hair changed color, going from the dark almost brown color of his youth to the sandy color it was as an adult. His face thinned out and lost its baby fat and his teeth shifted from baby teeth to his adult chompers. After about a minute of growth, the full-sized Adam Milligan was sitting on Bobby’s couch, the empty jar of liquid still in his hands. 

There was a brief moment of silence before Sam spoke. “Adam? Hey, you feeling alright?”

Adam looked up at them, a curiously blank expression on his face. For a second Dean worried that maybe something had gone horribly wrong – did they accidentally erase all of his memories? – but after another few seconds Adam finally spoke, his voice deep and a little harsh after going through puberty in about sixty seconds flat: “If you guys _ever_ tell anyone about this, or ever mention it to me again, I’m gonna shoot all of you.”

Sam muffled his laughter with the back of his hand and Dean rolled his eyes. 

“Well, it was nice while it lasted,” Bobby lamented, turning to go back to his desk and clean up the mess that the ingredients of the spell had left behind.

“Agreed. You were _much_ more pleasant as a child,” Michael added in a teasing tone. 

He had to duck and run out of the room when Adam chucked the empty jar at him.

**Author's Note:**

> Because there are never enough kid!Adam fics in the world. Mostly I blame [Mark](http://cotthauser.tumblr.com/) for indulging my Skype keysmashing about this idea.
> 
> Adam's pronunciation of Michael's name is totally credited to [askbabynatural](askbabynatural.tumblr.com), run by the lovely [Karu](http://happyfunballxd.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Also dedicated in part to [Bella](http://tigerboydean.tumblr.com/) because she had a bad day and I'm hoping this will cheer her up. XOXO.


End file.
